COLLAPSE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Collapse

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/kəlˈæps/ Listen

noun

Collapse n.

A falling together suddenly, as of the sides of a hollow vessel.

A sudden and complete failure; an utter failure of any kind; a breakdown. (Colloq.)

(Med.) Extreme depression or sudden failing of all the vital powers, as the result of disease, injury, or nervous disturbance.

verb

Collapse v. i. (past & past part. collapsed; pres. part. collapsing)

To fall together suddenly, as the sides of a hollow vessel; to close by falling or shrinking together; to have the sides or parts of (a thing) fall in together, or be crushed in together; as, a flue in the boiler of a steam engine sometimes collapses. "A balloon collapses when the gas escapes from it."

To fail suddenly and completely, like something hollow when subject to too much pressure; to undergo a collapse; as, Maximilian's government collapsed soon after the French army left Mexico; many financial projects collapse after attaining some success and importance.

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Etymology of 'Collapse'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books

... more congenial to me. Alas! if I could really devote myself to these interests, if I could at last conquer my inertia.... But no! I shall remain to the end the incomplete creature I have always been.... The first obstacle, ... and I collapse entirely; what has passed with you has shown me that If I had but sacrificed my love to my future work, to my vocation; but I simply was afraid of the responsibility that had fallen upon me, and therefore I am, truly, ...

— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... blows from the axe he carried made the rough mud wall collapse, and, without a moment's hesitation Hickathrift forced his way through the hole he had broken, and from which a great volume of smoke ...

— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... without scientific help, he constructs churches, roads, and bridges. However, although these circumstances are so favorable for the development of the ability of the priest, yet it would be better for the buildings themselves if they were executed by professionals; for the bridges collapse readily, the churches often resemble sheep-folds, the more pretentious have at times most extravagant facades, and the roads quickly deteriorate again. However, each one does as well as he can. Almost all of them ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... that match bowled. He was prowling in sequestered lanes and broken-down barns out of bounds on the off-chance that he might catch some member of his house smoking there. As if the whole of the house, from the head to the smallest fag, were not on the field watching Day's best bats collapse before Henderson's bowling, and Moriarty hit up that marvellous and unexpected fifty-three at the end of the ...

— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... language, and it is a statement of the universal law of human history that, after any epoch of great aspirations and strong excitement of the noblest parts of human nature, there has always come a reaction of corruption and a collapse from weariness. What did 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' end in? A guillotine. What do all similar epochs end in, when they do not take the Christ to march ahead of them? An utter disgust and disillusion, and a despair of all progress. That is why wild revolutionists in ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

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